Forty million printers manufactured by HP from 2008 or later can now be adapted to interact with mobile devices, even if the printer was not originally designed that way.

The 1200w Mobile Print Accessory priced at $69.99 was one of the new products rolled out at HP Print Tech Day 2013 on its campus in Boise, Idaho. And Small Business Trends’ Chief Technology Officer Leland McFarland was on hand.

“The technology in that accessory is going to be added into all future HP models so you won’t need to purchase it separately in the future,” McFarland said. But for some older printers it’s now possible to “go mobile” without having to buy new printers.

Basically, McFarland explained, the device allows your smartphone to connect with the router in a standard HP printer through wireless direct connections.

In the alternative, the accessory allows Near Field Communication (NFC) between mobile device and printer – called touch-to-print capability. That means the two devices are able to connect simply by being in very close proximity — usually physically touching each other. Touching a printer with your mobile device establishes a connection. You must have an NFC-enabled smartphone, of course, to use the NFC capabilities.

“If you’re in a big office with multiple printers, you walk up to one of them and say, ‘I want to print on you’,” he noted. Touch your mobile device to the printer to start printing the images or documents you have in queue. That might be useful if you’re on site at a client’s office and need to print something.

What It Means to Your Business

So what can an accessory like this (see PDF fact sheet) do for your business? Well, if you’ve already got an HP printer that happens to be a 2008 model or newer, but aren’t ready to buy a new printer, you’re in luck.

HP’s Mobile Accessory converts your printers to the ability to print directly from your mobile devices, without a costly investment.

And making your office more mobile will help make you more efficient allowing you to work not just from your laptop and desktop but from your smartphone or tablet, too.

Shawn Hessinger is the Editor for Small Business Trends. He is a journalist and social media networker with more than a decade of experience in the traditional newspaper business before moving to the digital world. He was the former community manager of BizSugar and the former community editor at AllAnalytics, a site dedicated to professionals in the business intelligence and analytics community.

This is a pretty good investment I think. I would imagine this in an office like ours where people tend to print a lot. It pretty much enables one to easily print something directly from his or her mobile especially when that person has too much on going tasks and is always roaming the office grounds from meeting to meetings.

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